I’ve always wanted the band to move towards being less pop-driven and heavier and more exploratory. We needed to change it up, do something different and move forward. We wanted there to be space, because we wanted the record to sound heavy and open. If you want something to sound heavy, it’s about the space, not necessarily just the chord structures or the screaming.

On switching producers,

Quote:

We needed to change everything up. I don’t think we would have written these types of songs if we knew we were going with McTernan. We would have had a different approach. Dan and I said, ‘Let’s do something different: Let’s get someone different, let’s record it somewhere else, let’s write with some other people, let’s not put any boundaries on what we want to do.’